Brand (Positioning Statements) should be able to hold their position in the long run and ideally achieve the following 4 criteria:

Differentiate the business (Communicate the USP)

Provide a Creative (Campaignable and Sustainable) platform

Benefits should be ideally expressed explicitly to the customer

Provide support to the brand name

Even when designing a brand from scratch it is difficult to satisfy all 4 criteria, so meeting 3 for a new brand or even 2 during a re-brand is often a great result.

You need to communicate with:

Clarity

Consistency

Compression

to ‘cut through’ the clutter that is now prevalent in most service and product categories to consumers who are bombarded by more commercial messages than ever before!

So how do we do this?

Firstly we need to “own “own” a place in the consumer mind.the easiest and most effective way of “owning a place in your customers’ and prospects’ minds is to focus on the things that matter. Most small and medium enterprises do not have the time or the money to be all things to all people, in fact neither do the very big companies, and when they try, they end up meaning nothing to anybody. The result is at best mediocrity.

Focus demands Sacrifice – To own something you need to give up something else. Focus on the particular type of buyer. Markets consist of buyers who differ in their:

Wants

Resources

Locations

Buying attitudes

Buying behaviours

Simplicity adds value, by adding a halo effect for other benefits:

Simple benefit (the most important promise) oriented word works best no matter how complex the product or market.

The word must be exclusive.

Avoid change, personalities don’t change, neither should your Brand.

Positioning takes years and people don’t really change.

Next we will illustrate the power of brand positioning and focus with some examples.

About the Author

The Marketing Network is a one stop marketing & management consultancy (as well as a free information portal) focused on finding, attracting and retaining customers for our SME clients – Professional Services and B2B Companies.